


Getaway

by Quiddity



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, sheithsecretsanta2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 20:04:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13131138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quiddity/pseuds/Quiddity
Summary: He’ll never go for it. It’s too frivolous. It’s too spur of the moment. Keith lingers behind Shiro on the observation deck, both of them looking over the starscapes slowly spinning by. In the middle window hangs Keith’s problem. A massive floating snowball.





	Getaway

**Author's Note:**

> Here's my sheith secret santa gift for Ruka. I hope you have a lovely rest of the year!

He’ll never go for it. It’s too frivolous. It’s too spur of the moment. Keith lingers behind Shiro on the observation deck, both of them looking over the starscapes slowly spinning by. In the middle window hangs Keith’s problem. A massive floating snowball. Well, not a literal snowball, but a planet orbiting just far away from its sun that it’s covered in a thick layer of snow. 

Keith has already packed the black lion with thick blankets, extra food rations and a few other things for a day out. But now he’s at the hardest part of his plan; convincing Shiro to go down to the surface with him.

He can see it now. Shiro will smile, thank him, give him that soft look he always makes when he’s about to tell Keith ‘no’ but he feels a little bad about turning him down. But, Keith bites the inside of his cheek and steps up to stand next to Shiro. His phone had read December 23rd and, forgetting all of the weird things time tends to do when traveling through space, Keith felt like the snowball made a tempting place for a break. Shiro, of all people, deserves a day off. 

Shiro glances down at him, smiles lightly. “Isn’t it pretty?” he says. “I’ve been wondering if the surface is really as flat as it looks. What do you think?” Keith shrugs, crossing his arms across his stomach. Be smooth, he tells himself. 

“I was thinking we could go check it out?” he asks. His heart flutters. He’s almost a little impressed with himself for that. He still finds himself looking out the window instead of at Shiro. “I mean, we’ve got nothing better to do…” 

“Sounds like fun,” Shiro says. Keith looks to Shiro quickly, letting his surprise show. That was… a lot easier than he had expected. “I was just thinking the same, actually. We could round up everyone, spend the day on the surface. It would be nice.” 

“Uh, well, I was kind of imagining that it would be just… us?” Keith says. “I don’t have a problem with everyone else coming it’s just. You need a break? If everyone went down I think you’d feel like you have to watch out for them.” Shiro only laughs. 

“I would not,” he says, thumping Keith gently on the back. Keith loosens up a bit. 

“You would. You always do. Come on, we can both take the Black Lion, see what the surface has…” Keith lets his thoughts trail off when Shiro’s expression grows knowing. 

“Get some alone time?” he asks. Keith feels a little tense all over again, even as Shiro loops his arm around his shoulders and tugs him in tight against his side. “That doesn’t sound so bad either. Let’s find what we need and meet at Black in an hour?” 

“I already packed…” Keith mumbles. Shiro dips his head, his nose brushing Keith’s hair. 

“You what?” 

“I already packed,” Keith says a bit louder. “I wanted to surprise you so I packed blankets and food and stuff in the lion already.” Shiro laughs, presses a kiss to the top of his head. 

“Thanks then. I’ll go get dressed and be there in a few minutes.”

* * *

 

Thrusters kick up flurries of snow so thick it totally obscures their view of the landscape outside. Shiro lands laughing at the snow piled over Black’s nose. Keith stands, only to grip the back of Shiro’s chair when he feels Black shift beneath him and the view in the window rolls back and forth as the ship shakes the snow off itself before resting completely. 

“Thank god for gyroscopic stabilizers,” Keith sighs as he puts on his helmet. “She would have knocked both of us around like ragdolls doing that otherwise.” Shiro stands from his chair and presses the button to open the hatch. 

“I think it’s cute, but I can’t really expect her to have windshield wipers.” The hatch opens and Black leans down, setting her mouth equal with the top of the snow. But for a few seconds they both merely look out across the land. Everything is dusted in snow. It looks like they’ve landed in the middle of a vast plain. Rocks in the terrain have collected snow into massive drifts, the wind pushing the top of the snow into soft, wavy patterns not unlike a frozen, fluffy sea. To their left is a rock shelf, the dark stone of a short cliff rising above the snow. A perfect outlook. Keith points towards it, where the top is more thinly covered than everything else. 

“Try to make it over there?” he asks. Shiro hums in agreement. 

“Yeah, looks like a good spot to regroup,” he grins at Keith. “You first though,” he says. He approaches the edge of the Black Lion’s jaw, toes at the snow. It’s loosely packed. Sticky but not slushy. Keith doesn’t hesitate to hop out. 

He sinks in up to the shoulder with a startled cry. His suit keeps back a vast majority of the cold. It doesn’t feel much different than a snowy day on earth, but he had expected it to be knee deep, no so much he has to squish the snow in front of him even to see. Shiro hops in next to him, laughing. He’s a bit luckier, the snow only comes up to mid chest on him. He turns towards the cliff and shoves some of the snow in front of him to the side. 

“It’ll be easier if you follow me,” he says, stomping down the snow. Even so, Keith still has to fight it a little when loose pack falls between them and partially fills in Shiro’s trail. 

“You’re going to be exhausted by the time we make it up the cliff,” Keith grumbles. He doesn’t completely like having to stay in Shiro’s tracks but well, he know he’d could get lost in this much snow too. 

“No way, me?” Shiro says playfully. “This is just a good warm up.” Keith hums, unconvinced and shoves his hand into the wall of snow to his side, grabbing a handful and packing it into a ball. 

“Pretty confident in that?” Keith asks. “Really not pushing yourself to the limit?” 

“Please,” Shiro teases, not looking back at Keith. “I bet you I won’t even be out of breath.”

Keith lingers behind, lets Shiro put some space between them. He tests the weight of his ammo, then lets it fly. It explodes at the back of Shiro’s neck in a puff of fluffy snow. Shiro flinches, goes still. And for a second Keith is unsure of his reaction even as he reaches out and starts making another ball. 

Shiro glances back at him over his shoulder, eyes narrowed, the ghost of a smile on his lips. “That’s how this is gonna be?” he asks. Keith shrugs, steps back a little more. The options for dodging aren’t all that great when they’re both in a narrow corridor. But he’s never been a fan of doing things easily either. 

“Just want to make sure you don’t get too confident,” Keith says. “You’re just asking me to put you through your pace-” he’s cut off when a snowball catches him high in the chest and freezing slush seeps into the open portion of his helmet. Shiro’s laugh echoes off the snow, brighter than anything Keith has heard from him in months. 

“I’m sorry, are you okay?” Shiro wheezes between breaths. “I couldn’t resist.” Keith responds by hitting him again in the shoulder. It was  _ on _ .

* * *

 

“Where have you been since we left Earth?” Shiro asks. He points at Keith’s snowman, knocking off a bit of its misshapen hood. “If that’s what you think Kolivan looks like then I think you might have something wrong with your eyes.” Keith growls, points down at the Shiro’s snowman. 

“Says you! If Pidge saw that she’d never forgive you,” Keith says. Shiro looks at his own snowman, a little thing that barely comes up past his knee. Shiro only chuckles. 

“At least you can recognize who it is,” Shiro says. The challenge they had given themselves was ‘Excluding each other, who’s the easiest person to talk to?’. Keith looks at his own lumpy caricature of Kolivan and heaves an exhausted sigh. 

“Cut me some slack. It’s snow _ man  _ not snow _ galra.  _ It’s completely different,” Keith says. He looks between their snowmen, at the several more equally rough attempts to make the rest of the crew, and his chest warms. It’s been so long since he’s felt like he could relax and spend a couple hours doing something  _ fun _ . Making snowmen accomplished nothing in their quest to free the universe from the Galra Empire’s hold, but it’s been months since he’s heard Shiro laugh so openly, since he’s seen this sense of humor in him. 

Keith steps up to Shiro and wraps his arm around his waist. His helmet knocks against Shiro’s chest piece but he can feel Shiro hug him back easily, strong arms crushing him closer. “What’s this for?” Shiro asks, running his hand up and down his back. 

“I don’t know,” Keith hums. He hooks his chin on Shiro’s shoulder, looks out over the snow covered land. The black lion stands out starkly against the white plain stretching to the horizon.“I hope you had a good day.” 

“I did,” Shiro says. He lets go of Keith and joins him in watching the lion, though his hand still lingers at Keith’s waist. “I love the others, but I have to admit I’m a little glad you convinced me to do this just the two of us. Look at all that!” he says, motioning to the vast plain of snow. “I’d be too worried wondering if anyone’s gotten lost.” 

“You wouldn’t have to wonder. They  _ would _ get lost. Ten minutes, tops,”  Keith hums. Shiro thumps him lightly. 

“Have a little faith,” he say. Then, squeezing Keith’s hip affectionately. “Let’s head back to the lion? Looks like it’ll start getting dark before too long.” Keith nods and takes the lead picking his way back to the edge of the rock shelf and the corridor they’d cut through the snow on the way out. 

“Sounds good to me. I could stand to warm up a little.”

* * *

 

Half an hour later finds both of them changed into plain clothes. They’ve gotten into the storage chest and helped themselves to some of the candies Keith had stolen from Hunk’s experiments in the kitch. Shiro sits slumped and looking a happy kind of tired as Keith sets two cups of a cocoa..ish drink on a small table he’s folded out of the cockpit’s floor. 

“How is this lion going to have an end table in the floor but neither a microwave or an extra chair?” Keith asks. He leans against the dashboard. He’s perfectly content to stand; this is Shiro’s lion after all and it doesn’t bother him to let him have the only chair. But Shiro shakes out the thick, fleecy blanket he’s had draped over his lap and bunches it up to the side. 

“Plenty of space for you here,” he says. It comes so easy, and Keith feels his face warm when Shiro casually pats his thigh. Shiro’s grin says he knows exactly what he’s doing. “We can share the blanket.” Keith hesitates, but gives in quickly. It’s just the two of them. He climbs into Shiro’s lap, helps him wrap the blanket around them both before he rests his head on Shiro’s shoulder and settles in against his chest. 

He sighs and closes his eyes. Shiro hums softly. Goosebumps rise lightly over Keith’s neck as Shiro starts to play with his hair. “I missed this,” he says softly, tipping his head and resting his cheek on top of Keith’s head. “We haven’t done anything like this in a long time.” 

“Let’s find some more excuses to run off again,” Keith says. “We pass plenty of interesting planets every day. Maybe next time we have a bit of spare time we sneak out and check one out?” 

“As long as I can pick the next one,” Shiro says. He wraps his arms tighter around Keith’s waist, presses a kiss to the top of his head. “I’ll make it a surprise.” Keith takes a deep breath, feels the tension seeping from his body at the warmth of the blanket and Shiro, the soft, even beat of Shiro’s breathing lulling him to sleep. 

“I can’t wait.” 

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me [@quiddid](http://quiddid.tumblr.com/) on tumblr. I have a Discord as well, so if you're interested feel free to ask. Happy 2018 everyone. :)


End file.
